Why the Hollywood Sign’s Still Here
Tourists from all over the world continuously stream through the narrow winding steep streets of historical Hollywood, past Humphrey Bogart's and Madonna's former residences, jamming Lake Hollywood Park’s meager parking, to get a very close look at a replica of an old real estate sign.
For that’s what the Hollywood sign is, a designated Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Landmark that may be the city’s most world-famous feature. One local resident, Joy Efron, is used to the never-ending steam of tourists, and she particularly remembers two young Italian men who asked, in halting English, where they could find the Hollywood sign—and next they asked where they could find the mountain with the four presidents on it.
In July of 2018 Warner Bros. announced they are considering financing, at a cost of about $100 million, a tram that would run from the company’s Burbank lot up to the sign, alleviating some of the traffic congestion and giving people a comfortable way to get all the way up to the sign itself. Presently the only way to get to as close as possible—as opposed to seeing it from afar, which is sometimes possible from as far away as the South Bay—is to hike up to it, from one of several Griffith Park trails.
The sign was originally built in 1923 to advertise a real estate development. Thirteen wooden letters, roughly 50 feet high and stretching for about 600 feet along the crest of Mount Lee, spelled out “Hollywoodland.” Movie stars occasionally rode up on horseback. Even motor vehicles sometimes managed the rough steep dangerous terrain, including that of a drunk driver who hit the H in the late forties.
Partly because of the drunk-driving accident, in 1949 the Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation—by that time the City of Los Angeles owned the sign—did some renovation. They removed the “LAND” letters, so the sign would represent the community it overlooked.
By 1978 the old wooden sign was literally falling apart. The first O looked more like a U, several letters were sagging, and the third O collapsed.
The sign is here today because an eclectic assortment of Hollywood players donated $27,777 each to replace the wooden letters with steel ones. Each benefactor was matched with one of the sign’s letters.
Here’s the star-studded scoop on who saved the sign in '78:
H—Terrence Donnelly, publisher of the Hollywood Independent.
O—Giovanni Mazza, sometimes identified as an Italian film producer, but apparently the most obscure name involved. Searching his exact name on the Internet finds a twenty-first-century teen actor-musician, but no film producer, Italian or otherwise. There is a Wikipedia entry which says Gianni Mazza, born Giovanni Mazza, was a popular Italian TV personality in the seventies. It’s possible this popular Italian was trying to break into Hollywood in 1978 and donated to the Hollywood sign as a career move—but never actually produced any Hollywood films.
L—Les Kelley of Kelley Blue Book fame.
L—Gene Autry, singing cowboy and then-owner of TV station KTLA.
Y—Like the Y’s in Playboy, for Hugh Hefner, a leader in the fundraising effort.
W—Andy Williams, Hollywood singer and TV personality.
O—Warner Bros. Records, an off-shoot of the company that now wants to build a tram to the sign, financed the replacement of one of the remaining O’s, a letter that’s shaped like the company’s vinyl product.
O—Alice Cooper, pioneering Goth-rocker, has the second O in “wood” but the third O in the sign. Like Hefner, Cooper was a leader in saving the sign. When the 1978 restoration was underway, Cooper told the Los Angeles Times he had the idea to hit up nine benefactors for the cost of one letter each. In a publicity shot promoting Cooper’s work for the sign, he’s shown holding a small O where the third O was missing. He joked he had two O’s in his name and could give the Hollywood sign one.
D—Dennis Lidtke, the Hollywood Reporter identified him as owner of a graphic design firm, Gribbitt. He may be the same Dennis Lidtke who in the eighties owned the Palace, a prominent Los Angeles concert venue that featured appearances by many of that decade’s top pop-music stars. That Hollywood story ended sadly with ignominious legal troubles in the early nineties. No more recent reference to the life or career of any Dennis Lidtke can be found.
The original wooden letters may still be out there—somewhere--like the truth in the classic X Files TV show. CBS reported in 2005 that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce sold them to nightclub promoter Hank Berger, who sold them to producer Dan Bliss, who sold some small pieces as collectables but sold most of the remainder on eBay to an anonymous bidder for $450,400. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
posted by Lyn Jensen | 1:38 AM
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